It's nice to see them being kept in a tank that's big enough.

There's a pic of a humungous Acanthicus adonis on that website.

My two are quite shy. They get along fine with each other, but I don't think they would do well with some of the more aggressive species. As for the temperature, I think 79-80 degrees F is fine; that's about what mine are kept at.

racoll wrote:The pictures are small, but it is more than likely

Pterygoplichthys pardalis

.

The pattern on the underside looks right for pardalis.

Here's the article where he makes the claim; he says El Nino affects the jet stream. I'm not qualified to say whether he's right or wrong:

http://times.cluster.newsint.co.uk/tol/ ... 976679.ece

I wish all the luck and future success for the Floridan farms. But, don't you all think it's due to global warming? It's unusually cold here in Japan this year. Something is weird. According to the Times weatherman all this cold weather in the Northern Hemisphere has something to do with the El Nin...

I don't mind the thought of eating a snake, but putting ketchup on it? Yuck!!!

There's a silver lining to this cold: it'll reduce many of the invasive species in Florida. Iguanas, pythons and jewel c*****ds don't handle frost well. At all. It's also making it easier to capture exotic reptiles as they go into a state of torpor. (But causing problems for native reptiles as well...

They will socialize with their own kind and I don't think there would be a problem keeping them with the rift lake species S. petricola or lucipinnis, which are also gregarious. There could be a problem keeping them with the more territorial riverine species (like nigrita, etc.), which might result ...

There's a low-tech way of cooling the tank. Leave the cover off and position a fan so that it blows across the water surface. The water will be cooled somewhat by evaporation. You wouldn't want to do this all the time, obviously, but it might help during a heat wave.

Timberwolf wrote:It sounds like you did what I did and gambled on a really great-looking fish without really knowing much about it.

Not something to be encouraged, though, unless you can at least make an educated guess at what type of catfish it is--to be frank.

Dave Rinaldo wrote:He ordered one

I'll let you know what shows!

Well, for $8 it would be tempting. I once ordered "green porthole catfish" to see what they were. It turned out to be Hoplosternum littorale, and I still have them.

It has only happened to me once, with a Hypostomus faveolus . When I gave it an unusual food, persimmon (sharon fruit), it ate quite a lot and afterwards suddenly jumped out of the tank. I rescued it, and it seemed fine, but I have never again given persimmon to my plecos, in case it is toxic (or ha...

If they were euptera (the new name for eupterus) they would have the feathered dorsal fin by now. I think they are most likely nigrita.

It does look like one, yes. It can be difficult to tell nigrita from , which is a smaller species.

If you are interested in several of them (rather than a single one), I'd say make an offer on the group [or ask "Can you give me a good price if I buy the lot, you've had them for a long time...?"]). You can haggle in the shop, you know. They probably do know me well enough for that. A si...

Just a few comments since that shop is on my home turf: I've seen that big L. oncinus, it's a real beauty, but I can't afford it myself. I was hoping Martin S. might be interested, but he says he can't afford it either. Mats, I'm glad you agree that the S. decora aren't hybrids. I was 99% sure that ...

It's got nothing to do with catfish, but I thought this article was really interesting:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/s ... 943469.ece

Silurus wrote:The photos don't show enough characters, so I can't tell you which one this is.

Yeah, you need to catch it with your hands, flip it over, spread the pelvic fins, etc.

I've seen ones for sale that were bigger than the Cat-eLog size, so I agree with the upward increase.

The feathered dorsal fin develps as they grow, and the reticulate pattern gradually breaks up into one of spots. Your fish could be true featherfins, or they might be hybrids, but we can't really tell without photos.

I agree, it's a hybrid.

There is also the problem of its eventual size to consider.

Apparently you can teach them to take food from your hand, but I'm not sure how you get from Point A (not tame) to Point B (tame) without being zapped in the process.

I tried googling "Catfish Row" (as in Gershwin's Porgy and Bess) but no luck in finding a sign. I guess it isn't a real street. I did find this one, though:

The robbiana/nigrita/or something else problem is a difficult one. In the shops you sometimes find what appear to be other species mixed in with nigrita and being sold as them, but finding out what they actually are isn't always easy.

BTW I think this is quite a lucky find.

To minimise the fighting, when they go in the larger tank, make sure there are hiding places at both ends, and hopefully each fish will be happy with half of the tank as its own territory. However, I can't guarantee that this will work.

DJ-don wrote:im just checking to make sure and there is defintley no gulping air!

Even when the water is well-oxygenated they may do it the odd time. If they are doing it a lot, that's when you have a problem.

excuse that it is upside down. I can't seem to rightside it. It was shot on phone nd I don't know how to rotate it. There's a very good freeware program called Faststone Image Viewer that can do that and all sorts of other things. I couldn't live without it. You can download the latest version, 3.9...

Yes, that quotes Burgess, which is probably where I read it. There don't seem to be any observations of it in the wild, though.

I remember reading somewhere that the tendency of Sorubim lima to hang vertically is an adaptation to disguise itself among reeds.

Personally I think that in most cases when it happens in an aquarium, it's displacement behaviour due to the fish not being in a shoal.